IPA Best Practices, Design Techniques, tips and tricks, from the field and from inside the vendor, relating to the Interaction Process Automation product from ININ / I3 / Interactive Intelligence, Inc.
Author is Rick McGlinchey, an I3 employee from '97 to '08, who now works as a Process Architect and Consultant for Hire.

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Monday, January 28, 2013

IPA MarketPlace Download to Deployment Part 1

Hi there fellow IPA-lovers and Happy New Year! Well I guess that holiday greeting is a little belated, considering we have almost reached the end of January, but that's life in the Big City (of Indianapolis)...

Here's an article written by ININ's own Ross Blaettner, a guest blogger here at ProcessMyBiz.com with his second contribution (of a two parter, no less). You may recall an earlier post from Ross on gamification.

Ross works at ININ as an IPA Template Developer the Strategic Initiatives team, a fine group I've had the pleasure of working with on a couple of customer engagements for IPA. He and the gang are gearing up for launching the MarketPlace at ININ, which is very exciting stuff for IPA!

This time around Ross is helping us get ready to share IPA Templates and other stuff on the ININ MarketPlace.

Thanks again for your contributions Ross. Everyone else, enjoy!

MarketPlace Download to Deployment, Part One:

The Case for Next, Next, and FINISH!

by Ross Blaettner

When you buy and try new tech gear, do you ‘plug and play,’ or
‘plug and pray?’

Perhaps this vital character forms the difference between seconds and
hours, satisfaction or frustration.

(And there’s more to this question than comparing optimists versus
pessimists.)

Enter the determinists. Fortunately, there are factors within development control. “Yes, you can get a fortune cookie andwrite the message, too.”

The implied corollary: “Yes, you can
write software and control the
deployment experience, too.” So, let’s now focus on the gift of giving a good,
consistent deployment, sending a consistent, predetermined and favorable message.

When deploying your solution, think about the host environment and
conditions. What’s the best case scenario? What’s the worst case scenario?
Importantly, what factors exist between those two outcomes?

Sometimes better documentation and step-by-step verification can isolate
certain problems before they become ‘lost’ as elusive and confounding effects.
Unfortunately, however, in practice, the quantity of documentation can be
inversely proportional to likelihood of its adherence.

Then, documentation introduces levels of interference, due to differences
in language, interpretation, format, or human error. Honestly, technical
writing is a specialty of its own; the reality: there’s more involved than
“technical” and “writing.” Of course, even if the documentation is perfect, the
reader may be distracted, thereby skipping steps 5 and 13. If you provide
support, how do you know that all steps completed successfully? When
troubleshooting, it would be nice to give people the benefit of a doubt, but real-world
experiences suggest otherwise.

Well, fortunately, in many cases, you can communicate directly, quite
frankly, in binary, with the host machine. Here’s the key proposition: let’s
wrap all of the prerequisites, preconditions, and setup activities into a
solution-centric installer for a fast, efficient, and consistent experience,
complete with logging and unbiased step-by-step assurances. Instead of
requiring a captive IT professional to follow steps, give him or her freedom to
take a short break while your installer works its magic. (Chances are, you will
both fare better as a result of this latter approach.)

If you rely on a certain subsystem, check for its running state or even
perform an interoperability check during the install. Can files’ existence,
versions, or registry keys validate expected conditions? What are your system
requirements? How can you query the operating system for its proof of
compliance? How can installation routines prove that they have appropriate levels
of system permissions?

As the installer continues, check every step for success. Communicate
exceptional conditions through the UI, with an emphasis on strategies for
resolution. Remember, the presence or versioning of just one file could make
the difference between play or pray!

In a follow-up article, I will present a few free, easy and amazing tools
for crafting your very own installers. Now, get your MarketPlace solutions’ step-by-step
instructions and pseudocode ready for “Next, Next, and FINISH” convenience and
automation!